Our Team

Tom Velez, PhD, JD

Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Tom Velez is an accomplished entrepreneur, aerospace engineer, mathematician and computer scientist with over 40 years of experience in the development of complex technology-intensive systems in the aerospace, intelligence, military, and healthcare industries. His current interest and passion is directed at the effective utilization of advanced information systems technologies in support of outcomes-focused, patient-centered chronic disease care quality.

Dr. Velez received a B.S. in Mathematics from Iona College, M.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science from Adelphi University; Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Georgetown University and J.D., Magna Cum Laude from the University of Baltimore.

Dr. Velez founded Computer Technology Associates (CTA) in 1979, to focus on engineering and technology challenges of national significance. In 1985 Tom created “CTA Space Systems” to develop and deploy small surveillance and communications satellites for military, intelligence, NASA and commercial use. Over the next twelve years CTA Space Systems became a world leader in this market, having developed and launched over 37 R&D satellites of varied capabilities and sizes. CTA Space Systems was acquired by Orbital Sciences Corporation in 1997.

With CTA, Dr. Velez supported joint military healthcare organization TRICARE for over 15 years. During this period CTA helped develop their enterprise architecture requirements and helped to establish international medical standards (e.g. HL7, HITSP). He also participated in the R&D for future DoD/VA interoperable systems. Tom led research focused on intelligent agent applications to pharmacovigilance, patient safety, early detection of PTSD in recently traumatized patients, and the application of advanced semantics in clinical decision support applications.

Joy Hardison, MD, MPH

Chief Medical Officer

Dr. Hardison attended the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) to obtain her undergraduate degree in political science. She graduated Magna Cum Laude and received the Sanford Lakoff Award for best honors thesis, which was a study of uninsured and underserved populations in California using the California Health Interview Survey. During her undergraduate studies she also served as the president of the UCSD Flying Samaritans, building and coordinating a free medical clinic in Ensenada, Mexico. In addition, she worked at UCSD in cancer research.

Dr. Hardison then attended Mayo Medical School while simultaneously studying public health at the University of Minnesota. She graduated in 2009 with both her MD and MPH. Her MPH thesis examined creating a model for preventing comorbidities associated with hip fractures in the elderly.

During medical school, Dr. Hardison served as co-president for the Mayo Clinic chapter of the American Medical Association, Medical Student Section and founded the Medical Student Section’s Committee on Public Health. She also volunteered as an advocate for victims of sexual assault after undergoing a certification program through the Olmsted County Social Services Department and receiving special training at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Dr. Hardison completed her residency training in Emergency Medicine at the University of Arizona in Tucson where she pursued a focused interest in trauma medicine and mass casualty events. Before joining Vivace Health Solutions as Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Hardison practiced Emergency Medicine as an attending physician at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego.

Dr. Hardison has always been passionate about taking care of patients, whether it be helping one patient at a time in the Emergency Department or working in clinical research and public health to positively impact lives by the thousands. She believes that doctors must be advocates for their patients both inside and outside of medical institutions. She is excited to be a part of the team at Vivace Health Solutions because it allows her to further her mission of empowering patients and clinicians by creating tools that improve health.

Tim Tschampel

Chief Technology Officer

Tim has over 15 years of experience developing and designing enterprise applications for mission critical military, government and commercial projects with a focus on artificial intelligence. In addition to his work for Vivace Health Solutions, Inc., he has also worked for Quantum Retail Inc., Qi Developer, and Vivace’s parent company, Computer Technology Associates (CTA).

His expertise includes design and development of a new software agent platform, WebAgents, compliant with FIPA specifications as well as leveraging current specifications and technologies from the service oriented architecture (SOA) and semantic web technology areas. His platforms have been used in a variety of critical applications, including tactical military command and control in support of special operations, tactical intelligence, and strategic systems such as space-based radar operations for the US Air Force.

His experience also involves developing platforms for clinical decision support, including the application of semantics and agent software techniques to existing health care data, systems and standards (HL7), as well as development of ontology-aided natural language processing (NLP) to correlate data from multiple sources for end-system analysis through user-defined rules (FOL, DL and MathML).

In addition to his experience in government, military, and healthcare domains, he also has worked in the commercial domain to support retail analytics, including forecasting, order planning, allocation, and modeling that influence billions of dollars annually in retail supply chain decisions.

Tim graduated from University of Rochester with a degree in chemistry.

Mike James

Chief Security, Information Technology, and Network Engineer

Mike received his Bachelor of Science degree from Clarion University of Pennsylvania and his Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) from ISC2.

After college, Mike served in the United States Air Force where he was in charge of designing a database that joined the civilian Law Enforcement community with that of the military. Immediately after leaving the Air Force, Mike was the Systems/Network Administrator for a team working on the Integrated Weapons System Database (IWSD) for the U.S. Air Force Space Command. It was in this role where Mr. James learned the science and importance of network integrity/security.

Upon successful completion of the IWSD, Mr James serves as the Director of Information Technology for Computer Technology Associates (CTA). Mike designed the current network used by CTA by employing the use of “Cloud” technology and Virtual Private Networks (VPN) to allow secure and efficient data transfer.

Mike helped architect V-Cloud as a seamless and secure network built to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) standards. Mike”s wide range of experience allows him to understand and implement security in a layered technique permitting each process to work independently yet integrate to the overall secure solution. Mr. James’ experience in PKI (Public Key infrastructure) and transmitting and receiving secure (encryption/decryption) documents, compliments the V-Cloud solution. This experience includes secure Key Exchanges over the public internet and HIPAA compliant email (through the use of a secure proxy). In addition to HIPAA, Mr. James has fourteen years of experience in firewalls, Wide Area Networks (WAN) and Local Area Networks (LAN) security, allowing him to leverage Systems, Network and Device security to create a reliable network current to all Government Standards.